BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:PUBLISH
PRODID:-//Virginia Tech//VT Calendar//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20180207T000000Z
UID:1516983837043@events.msu.edu
CATEGORIES:Public Programs
DTSTART:20180207T000000Z
DTEND:20180207T013000Z
SUMMARY:Year of Global Africa:  Book Signing with Rochelle Riley
DESCRIPTION:
 The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring 
 Impact of Slavery is a plea to America to understand 
 what life post-slavery remains like 
 for many African Americans, who are descended 
 from people whose unpaid labor built this land, 
 but have had to spend the last century and 
 a half carrying the dual burden of fighting 
 racial injustice and rising above the lowered 
 expectations and hateful bigotry that attempt 
 to keep them shackled to that past.\n
 \n
 	The 
 Burden, edited by award-winning Detroit newspaper 
 columnist Rochelle Riley, is a powerful 
 collection of essays that create a chorus of 
 evidence that the burden is real. As Nikole 
 Hannah-Jones states in the book's foreword, 
 "despite the fact that black Americans remain 
 at the bottom of every indicator of well-being 
 in this country-from wealth, to poverty, to 
 health, to infant mortality, to graduation 
 rates, to incarceration-we want to pretend that 
 this current reality has nothing to do with 
 the racial caste system that was legally enforced 
 for most of the time the United States 
 of America has existed." The Burden expresses 
 the voices of other well-known Americans, such 
 as actor/director Tim Reid who compares slavery 
 to a cancer diagnosis, former Detroit 
 News columnist Betty DeRamus who recounts the 
 discrimination she encountered as a young black 
 Detroiter in the south, and the actress Aisha 
 Hinds who explains how slavery robbed an 
 entire race of value and self-worth. This collection 
 of essays is a response to the false 
 idea that slavery wasn't so bad and something 
 we should all just "get over."\n
 \n
 	The descendants 
 of slaves have spent over 150 years seeking 
 permission to put this burden down. As 
 Riley writes in her opening essay, "slavery 
 is not a relic to be buried, but a wound that 
 has not been allowed to heal. You cannot heal 
 what you do not treat. You cannot treat what 
 you do not see as a problem. And America continues 
 to look the other way, to ask African 
 Americans to turn the other cheek, to suppress 
 our joy, to accept that we are supposed to 
 go only as far as we are allowed." The Burden 
 aims to address this problem. It is a must-read 
 for every American. Published by: Wayne 
 State University Press\n
 518\n
 \n\n
 Sponsor: MSU Museum\n
 Sponsor's Homepage: http://museum.msu.edu/\n
 Contact name: MSU Museum\n
 Contact phone: 517-355-2370\n
 for more info visit the web at:\n 
 http://museum.msu.edu/\n
LOCATION:MSU Museum Habitat Hall
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR